Amalia´s "anomalies": Corruption and fraud charges against former Zacatecas governor Garcìa Medina

A "political persecution" and "witch hunt" - or the uncovering of massive corruption, embezzlement and overspending? Mere days after Miguel Alonso Reyes assumed the governorship of Zacatecas in September, his finance secretary informed Amalia García's government had left a debt of at least 2 billion pesos. Now, two months later, the state's financial control organ appears to have uncovered a range of financial irregularities in her 6-year Zacatecas administration, with more than 1.5 billion pesos "diverted" or simply lost. This includes: million-peso contracts that weren't properly tendered, falsified invoices, manipulated social programs, irregular personal loans, illegally contracted debt, and, to add, spending millions of dollars on hiring popular artists to perform, such as paying 17 million pesos to Plácido Domingo, 15 millones to Alejandro Sanz, and 9 million pesos to Juan Gabriel - this, in one of Mexico's poorest states. Amelia Garcìa in response accused the new Alonso Reyes government of engaging in a "witch hunt" and "political lynching," and mere incompetence in the revision of the accounts.

"The offensive that you and your government has started is without merit and is motivated by political reasons. To these accusation I and those who were my staff have decided to ive a timely response, yet it is clear that along with acting in bad faith, there is great inability to investigate with professionalism the information that was provided with the handover of the administration.

Notably, though, there were no direct responses to the specific accusations. Moreover, further comments said in defense were hardly ingenious: Medina, in a PRD press conference, suggested the new government, was only trying to cover up its own incompetence and the growing violence in the state - a bit of a far stretch given that the Alonso Reyes only took over two months ago, when crime had long been on the rise. Her daughter, Senator Claudia Corichi, for her part meekly rejected accusations of her incompetence as head of the state DIF, because her position was merely "honorary."

What will come of these accusations, if they are indeed true? Governor Miguel Alonso Reyes has certainly backed up the control organ's investigation, and already before the preliminary results  - which so far only cover about 2 percent of the state's total budget - had been released, the  former director of investigations of the state attorney general's office was detained for embezzlement, although Guillermo Huízar Carranza, the state comptroller, says the government is so far not accusing Garcìa directly of any wrongdoing. Moreover, as El Universal points out in an editorial, such "housecleanings" only seem to be done whenever there is a change of parties in the state government, more than hinting at a political tinge to the investigation. Certainly, many of the new functionaries, as well as the governor himself, are very close to Garcìa's predecessor, Ricardo Monreal Ávila, who while then technically of the same party - Monreal was a lifelong PRI member until he failed to get the gubernatorial nomination, and then joined the PRD (he dumped it for the PT later) - soon became a bitter enemy of the Garcìa administration.

Yet Garcìa hasn't herself exactly inspired confidence by appointing close members of the family to important posts. And while she appears knee-deep in serious corruption charges, she still took the time off for a final offensive at PRD Senator Tomás Torres Mercado, managing to have the Zacatecas senator expelled from the PRD for having backed the campaign of Alonso Reyes, a former PRD member himself. Whichever the nature of the recent investigations - a political witch hunt, revenge, or actually the uncovering of massive wrongdoing - this should really be the least of her concerns.

Guerrero: Ruth Zavaleta joins the gubernatorial campaign of PRI's Manuel Añorve Baños

In some ways it´s quite a shocker, in others not: Ruth Zavaleta, former federal deputy of the PRD, has now started appearing in campaign events for Manuel Añorve Baños in Guerrero and declared she supports his candidacy for governor. Notably, Zavaleta was the former president of the Chamber of Deputies 2007-2008, and a federal deputy for the 2006-2009 period. While she officially resigned from the PRD in 2009, it is nonetheless quite a surprise to see that Zavaleta is backing PRI, the nemesis of her old party.

Yet Zavaleta is from Guerrero, and remains close to Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, who was elected as the PRD's candidate in 2005 yet frequently clashed with the party, and who in recent months have launched vicious attacks on the PRD when he failed to impose his favored candidate to succeed him. She has, in essence, simply followed his path.

The case of Zavaleta is yet another sad example of the excessive opportunism within Mexican parties, of which the PRD is hardly exempt: The past months have seen the resignation of Senator Minerva Hernández Ramos from the party to join PAN, and in Baja California Sur, Marcos Covarrubias was long a front runner for the gubernatorial nomination, yet when he failed to achieve it he as well joined PAN.

Yet Zavaleta was no opportunistic newcomer to the PRD: She was one of the original party founders of the PRD, and served as borough/delegation chief in Mexico City in Venustiano Carranza before she became a federal deputy. This in contrast to e.g. Zeferino Torreblanca, who never joined the party in the first place, and whose policies as governor resembled little of the PRD's agenda. That Zavaleta would now join the candidacy of a man who is about as far removed from a leftist agenda as possible, Manuel Añorve Baños, suggests that whatever political convictions she might once have harbored, they were easily discarded on the altar of expediency and opportunism.

What is AMLO really doing? Photos like this makes one wonder

Having gone to great pains to identify Enrique Peña with reviled former President Carlos Salinas, showing at every possible occasion a blown up poster of the two together, it was more than a bit ironic that merely days after having been designated his candidate, pictures of a Yeidckol Polevnsky with Peña Nieto from an event this Monday would hit newspapers today. 

From La Jornada

A damning indictment of PAN leadership contenders: Debate "not necessary"

It's outright embarrassing, and speaks volumes of the low caliber of most of the contenders for PAN's party presidency: Cecilia Romero informed that she and the four other candidates had decided, against earlier promises, to simply skip any debates: "It was a joint decision and it is now out of the question ... we are not enemies, we are not adversaries, we are contenders in the same way."

So the PAN leadership succession is therefore, as critics have complained, merely a contest between personalities and/or based on whether one professes unquestioning loyalty or not to Calderón, rather than between candidates with well thought-out plans and visions for what they want the role of PAN to be?

I have defended and will continue defending PAN's way in which they choose their party president - by a vote in the national council rather than a debilitating mass-base election - yet to not even meet for a mere debate really serve to undermine the very point of holding this practice at all, and threatens to expose the "election" as a mere sham.

Bishop Onésimo Cepeda's convenient heart attack may save him from jail

After spending a few days in the hospital, Onésimo Cepeda, bishop of Ecatepec in Mexico State and a very close ally of Gover Enrique Peña Nieto, was released. He is facing charges of involvement in a huge fraud of valuable paintings worth an estimated $130 million - dollars, that is.

Yet given a reform to the article 55 of penal code in Mexico City in 2004, which stipulates that those over 70 with health problems may be placed in "house arrest" rather than in the dock, the bishop's heartattack - if there ever was one - may have saved him from prison. His own sister, Lily Cepeda, angrily denounced her bishop brother, claiming he faked it as a ploy to avoid prison or evoke sympathy.

When it comes to the more wacky and sinister members of the Mexican clergy such as Onésimo Cepeda, this would be less than shocking.

PAN expert Soledad Loaeza receives Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in social sciences

For students of PAN, Soledad Loaeza is a well-known name; her 1999 El Partido Acción Nacional: La Larga Marcha is a classic. Loaeza is out with a new book,  Acción Nacional, el apetito y las responsabilidades del triunfo, published by Colegio de México, her workplace.

It was just announced that she won the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in the social sciences. In that regard she offered a few thoughts on the PAN. While one cannot expect that the party would not fall into any of the nefarious practices established by PRI and its 71-year rule of Mexico, Loeaza notes,

"We can, however, demand honesty and we can complain that they have fallen into corruption very similar ore even worse that we complained about with the priístas, with regards to handouts, with extravagant expenditures of public officials. One of the main criticism that PAN historically directed to the PRI is that they had a very large administrative apparatus, that they spent too much on running public costs, that the salaries were stratospheric, and utterly unjustified. Yet now PAN has fallen into the same thing."

It's a damning indictment that sadly sums up the behavior of a great deal of the party's cadres in its decade of holding federal power.

Enoé Uranga: Jalisco governor suffers from "grave problem of homophobia"

Federal deputy of the PRD, said it best: Governor  Emilio González Márquez of Jalisco is "suffering a grave problem of homophobia," and offered to facilitate a training course for the governor with CONAPRED, the Mexican National Council to Prevent Discrimination, in response to the Jalisco governor's slurs and sponsoring of "gay conversion" events.

PRI's  Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, president of the Chamber of Deputies, simply stated, "One cannot spend public money on whims," and said he will push for a federal audit by the Auditoría Superior de la Federación to determine the extent to which the Jalisco government has abused public funds for these and other events, which has made Governor Emilio González the laughing stock of the nation.